Customer-generated content
Photography and video made by people who bought the product with their own hands, in the room where they use it. Licensed to the brand, and good enough to run as paid media.
What customer-generated content is
Customer-generated content is photography, video and writing made by a person who bought and used the product themselves, published on their own account, and licensed to the brand. It is a narrower thing than user-generated content, which covers anything a member of the public posts, including reviews, complaints and content the brand never sees. It is also a different thing from influencer marketing, where the person is chosen for the size of their audience rather than for their relationship with the product.
The distinction is not academic. It changes who appears, what they can credibly say, and what the content is worth afterwards. A customer who has just spent their own money on a product speaks about it differently from someone who was sent it, and a shopper can tell the difference in about two seconds of scrolling.
theSalt has produced 186,800+ pieces of customer content to date, from a community of 700,000+ real customers. Every piece comes with full content rights to the brand, licensed for paid, organic, retail and internal use.
How the content gets made.
Nobody is handed a script. The brief sets the product, the occasion and the disclosure, and the customer does the rest.
Brief
The product, the moment you want captured, and where the content will be used.
Match
An opt-in survey finds customers who genuinely buy in the category and fit the brief.
Buy
They purchase the product themselves. Proof of purchase is matched to the customer and to the post.
Create
They shoot it where they use it, and post it to their own network with the advertising label attached.
Licence and deliver
Content is moderated, rights are confirmed, and the library lands with you ready to run.
Content that came from a purchase.
The cheapest way to make content that looks like customer content is to hire someone to fake it. It photographs well and it converts badly, because the specific detail that makes a post believable is the part a hired creator cannot invent.
Creator content, made to order
- Chosen for follower count
- Product couriered to the creator
- Shot to a brand script and a mood board
- One studio-lit kitchen that belongs to nobody
- Rights negotiated per asset, often for six months
Content that came out of a real purchase
- Chosen because they already buy the category
- Product bought by the customer in their own shop
- Brief sets the moment, not the opinion
- Real houses, real gardens, real weather
- Full content rights to the brand
What customer content does on paid.
Two campaigns, each labelled by the market it ran in.
Kiwicare Weed Weapon
Customer content and the brand's own paid ads ran side by side in the same campaign window.
- 2.78% click-through on customer content, against 1.07% on brand paid ads
- NZ$0.20 cost per click
- 88% reach of the 25 to 54 band
Source: Kiwicare Campaign Report, January 2026.
Unilever Sunlight
Households trialled the product at their own sink after a formula change and posted honestly about it.
- 226% of the planned content volume delivered
- 9x return on customer reach
- 3x return on performance media
What people ask about the content itself.
Is customer-generated content the same as user-generated content?
Not quite. User-generated content is anything a member of the public posts, whether the brand knows about it or not. Customer-generated content is made by someone who bought and used the product, is briefed, is moderated, and is licensed to the brand. The second is a commissioned asset; the first is weather.
Is this influencer marketing?
No. Nobody needs a follower count. People are matched to a brief because they genuinely buy and use products like yours, which is why the audience they post to is made up of people who actually know them.
Who owns the content?
You do. Every piece comes with full content rights to the brand, licensed for paid, organic, retail and your own sales material.
How much content does a campaign produce?
Dozens to hundreds of pieces, scaled to the brief. One South Africa campaign produced 273 pieces in 48 hours; a five-person New Zealand campaign produced a smaller, deeper set that was enough to outperform the brand's own paid ads.
What happens to content that is not good enough?
It is rejected. Content is checked for the brief, the product being visible and correctly used, the advertising label being present at first interaction, and anything that would breach an advertising code. Rejected content is not licensed and is not paid for as delivered work.
Does customer content need an advertising label?
Yes, whenever the brand has paid for it. Under the Advertising Standards Authority codes the label is Ad, Advert or Advertisement, shown at first interaction rather than after a see-more link.